Sunday, November 28, 2010

RockMelt

The Internet has done it again. Another program has been created that will better my quality of life, allow me to use social media in ways I never dreamed possible. I recently was invited to try RockMelt and I am totally hooked.

Powers talks about how our hyperconnectivity is ultimately detrimental. But what if hyper connectivity is leading to a streamlining of my Internet experience that ultimately gives me more free time? RockMelt is a browser like Firefox or Internet Explorer but the twist is that it is built for social media. You cannot open it without logging in to Facebook and when it open it displays feeds for whatever social media or websites you check daily. If a site has an RSS feed, it will show a number that stands for the number of posts you haven't read yet. In essenence, my entire Internet experience can be over beore it begins if there is nothing for me to read.

Maybe this is a way to deal with the overload of information that the Internet presents us. We would be in chrge of what we decide to read or not read so it would be up to the user to decide to find worthy content but by cutting down on the time it takes to  visit many different websites, mayybe we could be gaining valuable free time to actually exist. Now this is no solution for those of us who are glued to our smartphones checking in on Foursquare or updating Twitter but it does streamline one end of the experience and I think that at the very least that is a beneficial start.

Here's a video of RockMelt in action:
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1 comment:

  1. look at it from the perspective of deep ecology, though. . . isn't it kind of authoritarian? centralized? and will it leave you "free" only to get busy (in Powers's sense) with other cyber activities?

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